My Sister's Book

Before she died, my sister gave me a Little Black Book. It was about the size of a match box, and it fit perfectly in my pocket. It was a very special gift, to her silly younger brother, filled with the meditations of her life; brief thoughts from a mind that had endured many struggles.

I’d come to rely on the book as a means of navigating my life. I had it open in one hand as I stood by the bow of the ship. Waves sloshed the hull below, gulls cawed overhead, the chatter of the shipmates a background to those sounds. The scent of salt water tingled my nose, and a queasiness tossed inside my stomach.

I’d never felt at home on a ship. My home was landlocked, far from any coasts. My sister loved the sea and hated being landlocked. The epigram I was reading reflected that: ‘Freedom of mind and freedom of heart require freedom of place.’

My sister was a nurse. She helped people on a daily basis, whether at work or at home. People called her up to vent to her, and sometimes even came knocking. She gave all of her head-space to others, and reserved none for herself. As she got older, the wear of this began to show. She became forgetful, anxious. She had half a head full of greys in her thirties and was snow-white by her forties. By her fiftieth, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour the size of a hockey puck. It was in those last years that she really sat down and filled out the Little Black Book. The book listened to her, allowed her to vent, as she had always done for others. By reading it, I felt as if I was listening to her, too. But really she was just giving me advice and guiding me.

After she died, I inherited $20,000 from my sister. She always wanted the best for me, and maybe she thought I could do something worthwhile with the money. It hadn't helped her survive her cancer, and I wished I could use it to bring her back. Instead, I decided to spend it honouring her memory by hiring a sailing ship.

I closed the book and leaned on the railing, watching the waves. It only made me queasier, so I turned away from the railing and put my nose back into the book. My ship was headed home—to the home where I grew up with my sister. It wasn’t my home anymore, I lived in another country now, but my sister never left that landlocked place she hated. I was going there for the funeral. I wanted to return the book to her, and I took a ship because she was fascinated with the idea of sailing. It was a small sailing ship, one that required a lot of hands-on work. The sailors scaled shrouds, fought with knots, and hauled on the spokes of big wheels. I knew nothing about sailing, and everything they did seemed to have some sort of consequence that I couldn’t understand. But once docked, I would take a plane the rest of the way.

I was thinking of the plane ride now, my nose in the book, as the sailors began to shout something over the sounds of the sea. I looked up in time to see the jib swinging my way. I made a lurching movement, a poor reflex, and threw my hands up to cover my head. The jib struck my arm, and knocked the book flying out into the sea. I knelt on the deck, holding my arm, staring stunned at the railing. I jumped up and ran to it, cast my eyes out in search of the book. It floated forty feet from the ship, dipping up and down with the waves, rapidly getting farther and farther away. I put my leg up on the railing, but the sailors reached me in time to drag me back.

‘Keep your shoes on,’ the first mate shouted in my ear, ‘I’ll get you another one.’

I tried to explain the importance of the book, and yelled at him to go after it, but he looked at me as if I were an idiot, slapped me on the back and told me it was long gone. I went for a life boat, grabbed at knots and tried to yank them free, no idea what I was doing. They grabbed me again and hauled me down below deck and locked me in my cabin.

Grabbing pen and paper, I tried to write down as many lines from the book as I could remember, but it wasn’t very many, despite how many times I’d read it, and how much they meant to me. The first mate apologised later, for the bit about the jib and the loss of the book. I never forgot his apology, and his promise of getting me another book.

The funeral was a sad affair, one that my sister would’ve hated. If I’d had any say, I would’ve held it outside, somewhere with lots of birds, trees, and a strong breeze. Maybe with a view of the beach. But, ‘It’s not easy to manifest your ideals in reality,’ as my sister wrote.

My parents invited me into our old home. I had strong memories of my sister there, and the emotion I hadn’t felt during the funeral hit me hard as I stepped through the door to see the photos of her on the walls. I went up to our old room that we shared. My parents had kept it the same as when I’d left. I looked through my old belongings, through the wardrobe and the closet, through the chest of drawers and the end table—and there it was, in the middle drawer beside my bed. The Little Black Book.

Taking it out of the drawer, I sat down, mind reeling. That drawer was where I kept my books as a boy, the ones I wanted within arms-reach while I was in bed, but the Little Black Book had never been in there, how could it possibly be there now? It should be drifting on the ocean waves, with all its insight lost to the fishes.

I felt a shiver crawl up my spine, opposed by a warmth that flushed out from my face and chest to converge in my middle. I shook out my arms and legs, and the restlessness faded, leaving me glowing with a strange heat, a sensation I can hardly recall—an otherworldly peace.

There was a part of me that thought I shouldn’t take the book, that I should leave it behind in the drawer, because that was where it was meant to be now. Perhaps it was put there for my sister, returned to her as I intended to do. But another part of me urged that I had found it again for a reason, that it was put there because I still needed it.

So I slipped the Little Black Book into my pocket, and took the ship back home.